In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson, we recognize the critical spirit that informs the bulk of their work, yet are compelled on the whole to classify them as poets, or historians, or philosophers.  Even Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable amount of the best literary criticism in existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet; even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his plays the major part of his great reputation.  As for such men as Ben Jonson and Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and Heine, their critical utterances, precious and profound as they frequently are, figure but incidentally among their writings, and we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning their opinions about other people’s productions.  For examples of the man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetiere, and the subject of the present sketch.

[Illustration:  Georg Brandes]

It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which must be given to Georg Brandes.  Not only is his attitude consistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification in any other than the critical category.  Even when he takes us with him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions in the world as to the avoidance of “shop,” he finds himself in the end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries.  One of his latest books, ‘Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder’ (Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following opening paragraph:—­

“One gets tired of talking about books all the time.  Even the man whose business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other people, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world:  its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art.  For him too does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall, a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove.  He too has been in Arcadia.”

Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be described as the work of the critic.  Not only are the set papers upon such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies, but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art and literature of the countries visited.